Kyle paints, draws, throws clay, and researches art history as a Master’s candidate at Penn State University. His research is centered on the Ancient Andes where he investigates Inca textile imagery. Geometric symbols woven into these fabrics are unintelligible due to colonial erasure. His work seeks to recover their meanings.

He obtained his BA in fine arts and Spanish with minors in art history and sociology at Thiel College, a small liberal arts school. Soon after, he served as the Associate to the Dietrich Honors Institute at Thiel before heading to Penn State for graduate studies.

It was during a semester abroad in Ecuador at the University of San Francisco of Quito where he became enamored with the Andes while painting the landscape plein air, sculpting ceramics with native clay, and learning about the local art history. Out of this immersive Spanish experience came his fascination with the textile patterns that enliven Quito’s markets.

Kyle is committed to interdisciplinarity and combines visual and linguistic methods to enhance his research. He has recently been awarded two FLAS fellowships to intensively learn the Quechua languages that were spoken by the Incas, as well as a Whiting Indigenous Knowledge research grant from the University Libraries.